by Gerry Boyle
“Yeah.”
“So, what’s the deal?”
Melanie looked around. The waitress had disappeared behind the swinging doors again. Somewhere back there, dishes clattered.
“This guy owed us some money. A couple thousand dollars. We fronted it for him. For a week. He was supposed to sell the pot and make his money and pay us back.”
“Trusting souls,” I said.
“It was the second time. He came through fine last time.”
“What kind of volume are we talking about here?”
Melanie shrugged.
“Not huge. I mean, enough to support us. We make, I don’t know, six or seven thousand every fall.”
“A nice Christmas Club.”
“It pays the bills.”
“And beats really working in the woods.”
“Hey, it’s not easy. You’ve got to grow the stuff. And processing. That’s practically a full-time job. You ought to try it if you don’t think so. And people are very demanding these days. You can’t deliver ragweed.”
“Unless you want your legs broken.”
Melanie flinched.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Yeah, well, I don’t know what happened. But this is the thing: Bobby was supposed to be back because this other customer was going to call, and Bobby really didn’t want to miss him. Well, he did call. I had to say Bobby wasn’t around. This guy was gonna pay up front so we didn’t want to lose him. No more of this chasing people for it.”
“Is that was Bobby was doing? Chasing somebody?”
“Not like he was out to hurt the guy. He was just going down to talk about when the guy could come up with the money.”
“With Coyote just going to keep him company?”
Melanie looked at me but didn’t answer.
“So who’s the guy they were going to see?” I asked.
“Some kid we called Paco.”
“Is that his only name?”
“It may just be his name for this deal. These guys change names all the time.”
“You don’t even know the guy’s name but you fronted him two thousand dollars. For drug dealers, you guys are sure unsuspecting.”
“But we’re not drug dealers,” Melanie said. “This is an herb. It grows in the woods.”
“Right. Like truffles. And it goes for three grand a pound. God, how could you be selling that much and go on with this public legalization thing?”
“We believe in that.”
“Legalization would put you out of business, wouldn’t it?”
“It would be worth it.”
“And in the meantime, it’s a pretty good cover.”
Melanie shrugged.
“That’s what Bobby said. Who would think we’d dare, you know? It doesn’t hurt anybody. It’s not like we’re selling whiskey or vodka or something. It’s a victimless crime.”
“That sounds like Bobby talking.”
“Yeah, well, you spend all these years with the guy, you’re bound to sound a little alike. And it’s true, don’t you think? Who does this hurt?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the guy above Paco sells more than pot. Maybe he uses his profits to buy crack. Downtown Lewiston isn’t the Country Life Fair. Where’d they go? Lisbon Street?”
“I don’t know. I just have an address. Poplar Street. A number and an apartment. I almost didn’t have that. Bobby crumpled it up and threw it in the woodstove.”
“And you fished it out of the flames?”
“The stove wasn’t going,” Melanie said. “I was, I don’t know, I had a funny feeling about this one.”
There was a clatter and the doors swung open and the woman in the sweatshirt swooped in again. She asked again and I said we were doing fine. Melanie looked like she could use a cigarette.
“Oh, shit,” she said, and swallowed more coffee instead.
“So they just didn’t come back?”
“Nope. Nothing. Not last night. Not today.”
“And when they go off to put the muscle on nonpaying customers, they usually call so you can remind them to wear their galoshes?”
“Come on, McMorrow. I thought you could help me.”
“Help you? How?”
“I’ll pay you to go down there and see if there’s any sign of them. I don’t know, ask around. It’s what you do, right?”
I looked at her and shook my head.
“I ask around with a notebook in my hand. I don’t know who this Paco is, but something tells me he won’t be impressed with a press pass.”
“I’ll pay you a thousand dollars just to go and check. I mean, what am I supposed to do? I can’t call the—”
“Police,” I said.
“Well, I can’t,” Melanie said. “I just don’t know what to do. You could do it. I know you could.”
“What about all your pot buddies?”
“Who am I going to call? Roberta? Kathy? Sam? He could bring his son. Darrin could do it, but you know what he’d do? He’s facing these drug charges. He’d turn us in in a second. That’s what I’ve got. The people I can trust can’t do it. The people who could do it I can’t trust. And God almighty, I don’t know where my husband is.”
“Occupational hazard,” I said.
“Goddamn it, I love him,” Melanie said, and she looked like she was going to cry, but caught herself. She gave her eyes a quick wipe. As she did, three guys came in and gave us a once-over on the way to their stools.
“Cops?” I said.
Melanie looked.
“Too old,” she said. “They don’t use anybody over thirty-five.”
“Don’t they watch you pretty closely?”
“And Bobby lets them see what he wants them to see. A couple of plants. It isn’t worth the hassle for them to have him in a courtroom for little stuff. He’d turn it into a three-ring circus.”
“Kind of a strong personality, isn’t he?” I asked.
Melanie knew what I really meant. That he was domineering. Didn’t let her finish a sentence.
“Hey, I signed on for the duration, you know? And he did, too, warts and all.”
“Till death do you—”
I caught myself.
“I’ve got to know what’s going on,” she said.
“What about Stephen?”
“I can’t send him down there.”
“No,” I said. “I mean, is he worried?”
Melanie looked away.
“They never clicked. I don’t know why. Stephen was two. Just never liked Bobby, even back then.”
“He wants to be like everybody else,” I said. “Most kids do.”
“Yeah, well, there’s only so much I can do,” Melanie said. “And I’ve done it.”
“In this thing here, there’s only so much I can do.”
“Couldn’t you just ask around, sort of?”
“I’m not a detective. You could hire somebody who finds people for a living.”
“Isn’t that what reporters do?”
“Sort of, I guess. Sometimes.”
I shifted in my chair. Fiddled with the placemat, which had a maze printed on it for kids.
“I feel like I already know you, Jack,” Melanie said, her gaze direct this time. “And this sounds weird, but I feel like I can trust you. I could try to find somebody else, but it would be a completely new person. And it’s been—it’ll be twenty-four hours tonight. I mean, he’s out there somewhere.”
“They are, you mean.”
“I only care about one. I only care about Bobby.”
“So why does this Coyote guy live with you?”
Melanie pursed her lips, tugged at her red hair.
“Because Bobby said he was a good friend. He showed up and he needed a place to stay.”
“For the rest of his life?”
“Bobby said if Coyote went back to Massachusetts he’d be killed.”
I thought about that for a moment.
“You people aren’t what you’re cracked up to be,
are you?” I said.
“I am,” Melanie said. “Bobby is, pretty much. Coyote . . . I don’t know. He can be very nice. Thoughtful, sometimes. He just doesn’t say much. I think he got kicked around a lot as a kid. I mean, bad.”
“He isn’t a kid anymore,” I said.
We sat there for one more cup of coffee. The guys at the counter looked us over on the way out, and then the bell on the door jingled and we were alone again.
“So what do you want me to do? Find out if he ever got there? Find out if this place exists? Make sure he didn’t wind up in a topless bar?”
“Anything’s better than nothing,” Melanie said.
I looked into my coffee.
“I don’t know. It’s going to be hard for me to be there—as a reporter, I mean.”
“What about as a friend?”
“That’s when things get dangerous,” I said. “A press pass is kind of like a shield. Without that . . .”
I thought about it while Melanie fingered her empty cup.
“How’s this for a deal?” I said. “You keep your money. I write the story. But the whole story, including what I find in Lewiston. I’ll write it without your names. Different names. Not use the town of Florence.”
Melanie considered it.
“That’s the only way you’ll do it?”
“Yup.”
She considered some more.
“Sounds okay to me, but Bobby isn’t here to say yes or no.”
“We’ll cross that bridge later.”
She took a sip of stone-cold black coffee.
“Okay.”
“I need the address.”
Melanie bent down and came up with a bag that probably was made of hemp. She dug in the bag and pulled out a small rough cotton sack with a drawstring. She probably brought water in a goat’s bladder.
In the sack was a wrinkled piece of paper, torn off a spiral-bound pad. Melanie unfolded it.
“Seventeen Poplar Street. Third. That’s all it says.”
“How do you know it’s Lewiston?”
“Bobby said he was going to Lewiston.”
“Maybe he was lying.”
“He doesn’t lie,” Melanie said.
My eyebrows must have jumped.
“To me,” she said.
On that ringing note of endorsement, I stood up. I left two dollars on the table and Melanie left one. The woman in the sweatshirt came out from the kitchen and told us to have a nice day. I told her to do the same. Her chances seemed better than mine.
Outside, log trucks and pickups rumbled by. The sun had skidded down behind the hills to the west and it was getting colder. The main street seemed like something out of the Wild West. Spruce trees instead of sagebrush. We stood at the curb.
“I’ve got to go into Skowhegan and get Stephen at school,” Melanie said, digging into her bag for keys.
“What, he stayed late for target practice?”
“Detention,” she said. “He got in a fight.”
“Over what?”
“He wouldn’t tell me. I’ll take him to Burger King and try again.”
“Ply him with french fries.”
“Right,” Melanie said. “So when will you go down there?”
“I don’t know. Maybe tomorrow. I’ll call you tomorrow night.”
She nodded and walked up the street toward where the Chevy with the wooden bed was parked. I watched as she hoisted herself up into the cab, kicked the motor to life. There was a puff of blue smoke, as if starting the thing were some sort of magic trick. Voilà.
The truck rumbled toward me and Melanie slowed as she rolled down her window.
“That’s another thing,” she said. “He’s got my car. I hate this tank.”
And with a rueful frown, she went on her way. The truck went straight at the next light, heading for Skowhegan. I walked across the street and got in the Toyota.
And proceeded directly to Florence. Not once—well, maybe once—did I wonder what the hell I had gotten into.
11
I pulled into the Mullaneys’ road, drove fifty feet or so, and then backed the truck into an overgrown tote road that ended fifty feet into the woods. When the truck was out of sight, I shut it off and opened the glove box. I dug around and took out a yellow plastic flashlight and a small compass, the kind that pins to your jacket. I stuck it in my pocket instead and got out and started off down the driveway. The driveway ran almost due east, perpendicular to the main road. That meant the way out, even if I was bushwhacking, was roughly due west.
Natty Bumppo. On assignment.
In the woods, it was almost dark. The trees had receded into deep shadows, and stood like a watchful, swaying army that had parted to let me pass. I stopped and listened. Heard snaps. Cracks. The creak of branches rubbing together. A scuffling in the leaves.
I walked on.
Every hundred yards or so I stopped and stood by the side of the road and listened. The sound of the woods seemed like a din. I heard the rustling quickstep of a deer, somewhere above me. A loud crack in the trees to my left. I waited. Listened. Kept walking. As I started up the rise that led to the house, I slowed.
The house was dark. The Ford truck was still next to the garden. I stopped and listened and heard only the chickens making a muffled clucking in their coop. A couple of Rottweilers would have complicated things. I was grateful for Bobby’s allergies.
Without them, it was simple. I’d go in the house and find Bobby sacked out on the couch. He’d tell me he’d had car trouble and he’d tried to call home but the phone must have been off the hook, because the line was busy. All night and all day. I’d tell him his wife was worried sick and he’d thank me for my concern and I’d go home, having saved myself a trip to Lewiston.
“In your dreams,” I said.
I moved slowly toward the door and stopped. If the paths in the woods were rigged with thread, how did the Mullaneys protect their house? I stepped to the door and turned on the flashlight, playing it up and down the jamb. There was nothing sticking out. No paper. No thread. I turned the light off and moved to the front of the house and looked through the big windows. Inside, the place was dark and still. I went back to the door, stepped on the back stair, and slid the metal latch up.
The door swung open. I waited.
It was quieter in the house than in the woods. I went up the stairs and into the house and shut the door behind me. Listened. Walked into the room. Listened some more. Took another step and kicked a potato, which rolled across the floor like a bowling ball.
I froze. Listened. Nothing.
Nobody here but us chickens.
I went to the kitchen first and played the light across the shelves. There were glass jars of dry beans, big and small, light and dark. Jars of spices and little seeds. Jars of honey. Jars of flour and sugar. Brown, of course.
I opened the refrigerator and there were more jars and bowls in there. Nothing that could possibly have come from a supermarket. It looked like leftovers from the first Thanksgiving. I shut the door.
Maybe Bobby had gone on a junk food binge.
From the kitchen, a narrow hall led somewhere. I followed it and it came out in a very small room with a mattress on the floor, a couple of pairs of boots lined up, and a frame pack leaning against the wall. There were books lined up beside the pack, and I played the light over the titles. Edward Abbey. Thoreau. Something about living alone in Alaska. One about rafting the Amazon.
The library of someone who liked to be alone in the woods. Stephen.
I looked some more but the room was spartan. There was a metal foot locker on the floor, lid open, stacked with clothes. The clothes felt coarse, from years of drying on a line, washing who knows where. On the floor next to the foot locker was a stack of issues of Guns & Ammo magazine. I looked on the address labels for a clue. The magazines were sent to Stephen Corso, General Delivery, Florence, Maine. So he hadn’t taken the Mullaney name.
That didn’t surprise me, and did
n’t help me, either. With the beam of the flashlight playing on the rough wood floor, I walked slowly back to the kitchen. Another narrow hallway led from the rear of the kitchen straight back. I followed it and came to a door. Eased the latch up and gave it a small shove. I stepped back as the door fell open.
No gunshot. No crossbow. I played the light across the entrance. No thread across the doorway.
I walked into the room gingerly. This time the mattress was on a piece of plywood. The plywood was up on cement blocks. If they wanted to get rid of somebody, they tied them to Coyote’s bed and tossed them in a swamp.
There was a dark blue sleeping bag on the mattress, which was covered with a blue sheet. The sleeping bag looked like an expensive one. Maybe Coyote was a charter member of the Valley Outing Club.
On the floor next to the mattress was a pile of newspapers. I flipped through it. It was mostly Boston Heralds, a couple of Globes, all from the last month. There were no Maine newspapers. There were no magazines. There was a beat-up bureau against the wall at the foot of the bed. On top of the bureau there were a kerosene lamp and six books, three hardcovers. They were all by Stephen King. They looked well read.
I opened the top drawer of the bureau. There were matchbooks, a supermarket brand that told me nothing. There were a couple of pens. A pencil with a broken lead. An old black penknife. Two tape cassettes, both early Rolling Stones. Good taste but no clues.
Maybe if I played them backward.
The second drawer was for socks, mostly ragg wool and white cotton. There was nothing under the socks except more socks. There was nothing in the third drawer except underwear. Coyote wore briefs.
In the bottom drawer there were flannel work shirts, neatly folded and arranged in two stacks. I lifted the stacks and felt the wooden drawer bottom but nothing else. I dropped the shirts back in, thumbing through them as I went. It was in the second stack that I heard something. Or felt something. A crinkle.
I felt between the shirts until I heard it again, then felt it. The shirt was on the bottom. It was black and tan and looked old. I slid it out and felt again and reached into the pocket. And pulled out a folded twenty-dollar bill.
Coyote’s mad money? A bill that had gone through the wash? I looked at the twenty. It didn’t appear faded, the way paper money does after a few turns in the spin cycle. It was crisply folded. I opened it up and held it under the light. One side was normal. Someone had written something on the other.